


Cobra King's Clockwork Crown

by ckret2



Series: Pentious Week [4]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Ruler of Hell Sir Pentious, Vignette, cameo from Alastor & mentions of Alastor/Sir Pentious but not enough to tag them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: When the damned visited the recently appointed new king of Hell, his throne room was filled with a wide array of wonders, designed to fill first time arrivals with awe and terror. But of all the myriad things to draw the attention of a visitor, eventually, every visitor's gaze was called to the king's crown.As impressive an art piece as it was, that wasn't why his crown caught all visitors' attention. It was because it was alive.
Series: Pentious Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852252
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	Cobra King's Clockwork Crown

**Author's Note:**

> Written—over a week late, lmao—for Day 7 of [Pentious Week](https://twitter.com/bubbileii/status/1275233770136899585): "Free Space! Do whatever you want"! I didn't know what I wanted so I missed the date—and then it was Alastor Week and I didn't have time to finish this.
> 
> So I asked on twitter for suggestions on what to write, and one was "Overlord Au Sir Pentious. Su territorio seria un sueño steampunk" [Overlord AU Sir Pentious. His territory would be a steampunk dream], and like, I loved that, but instead of "Overlord AU" I went with "ruler of Hell AU."
> 
> Particularly because it reminded me that a few weeks earlier I'd found some awesome-looking crowns on etsy, linked them in the radiosnake discord, went "imagine if Sir Pent wore a crown like this," and someone else went "imagine if it moved" and I went "!!!!!" Check [here](https://www.etsy.com/listing/735966856/medusa-snake-headpiece-pharao?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details), [here](https://www.etsy.com/listing/735974478/on-order-medusa-headpiece-cobra-queen?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details), and [here](https://www.etsy.com/listing/743757307/set-medusa-ii-consisting-headpiece-mask?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details) for convenient references for how to visualize the snake crown.
> 
> This doesn't have a plot, I just wanted to revel in the imagery of Sir Pent's kickass throne room and have Alastor steal decorations from him.

When the damned visited the recently appointed new king of Hell, his throne room was filled with a wide array of wonders, designed to fill first time arrivals with awe and terror.

There was the room itself—vaulted ceilings that put the grandest of cathedrals to shame; mosaics of serpents and the new king's army of closest supporters in a rainbow of sparkling tiles; countless dazzling golden lights that shone off every available surface and lit up the ceiling like a thousand overlapping constellations, velvet black embroidered drapes to absorb some of the harsh light and cast portions of the room in deep shadows.

There were the people who typically filled the room. The eggs that bustled about on their many errands, most of them the pearly white or swirling iridescent of nacre, some of them painted jewel-colored enamel and bedecked in swirls of gold like Fabergé eggs—in crowds and from a distance, they looked like party balloons bobbing around near the floor. The multitudes of mere human sinners—newly-appointed nobles—who strutted around arrogantly like humanity already owned the universe; and the contrast they made with the native infernal nobility that cringed and cowered through the throne room in fearful deference to the man who had overthrown their whole class. The shadows that moved about detached from any persons, dancing along the walls in a way that further confused the already chaotic lights and shadows, delivering rumors and secrets to the king and carrying mysterious orders away—and sometimes setting up with shadows of instruments and playing a song for the king's entertainment on a schedule no one else could track.

Among the people populating the room was the one sinner with the black snakeskin coat and sharp antlers and even sharper smile, the one whom nobody else dared to stand near, the one who gave off electric static like the feeling in the air right before lightning strikes; he was the one who identified himself (no one knew if jokingly) as "the court jester and royal executioner," but everyone knew him better as the king's spokesman, right-hand henchman, and consort; he was the one who, before the coup, had been known as the Radio Demon, a universally-feared monster in his own right long before he'd taken a place in Hell's new regime.

Then there was the the collection of weapons arrayed around the throne like a halo, both defense system and decoration, elephant-sized laser cannons made of heavy riveted metal and meticulously painted with flowers and vipers and damask and vines.

Or the throne itself, an edifice of polished gold and rubies that looked like eyes—or perhaps eyes that looked like rubies—and upholstered with dyed black patchwork cushions made from the skins stripped from his enemies' backs. Or the king seated upon the throne, his silks and brocades doing noting to conceal his onyx black and metallic gold scales, or his many eyes that sometimes roved the room as if tracking dozens of activities at once and sometimes focused with an intensity like a spotlight on the face of the one who had approached him.

But of all the myriad things to draw the attention of a visitor to the throne room, eventually, every visitor's gaze was called to the king's crown.

It was like a crown and a halo at once, framing his head in gold, spines arrayed out in every direction like radiating golden sunbeams or like pikes upon which his enemy's heads could be speared. At the very top of the crown was another ruby eye and a grinning golden smile—most certainly something alive and intelligent. The rest was an elaborate amalgamation of delicate gears, miniature skulls, funereal flowers, and dozens upon dozens of tiny snakes, all in gold.

As impressive an art piece as it was, that wasn't why his crown caught all visitors' attention.

It was because it was _alive_.

The gears turned, their teeth locked together smoothly; the flowers slowly bloomed, withered, curled up into buds, and bloomed again; and the snakes crawled and writhed endlessly over the crown, weaving effortlessly through gaps in the larger gears' spokes, disappearing and reappearing beneath the flowers, climbing up and down the long sunbeam-like spines and filigree. It was a marvel of perpetual, hypnotic motion.

On occasions, the king's right-hand henchman was also seen wearing small golden snakes atop his head, curling around his antlers to turn them into a crown as well. A small portion of the king's power and influence symbolically shared with the sinner who held the most power in Hell after the king himself.

For how impressive the crown was—for all that its very motion drew attention—what really made it so hard to look away from was the fact that crown gave off the faint impression that there was something wrong with it.

Sometimes the king would catch visitors staring at his crown and ask, slyly, "What do you think?" (Or, at least, sometimes he would acknowledge their staring. With his many many eyes, it was hard to imagine he ever failed to notice it.) Sometimes his visitors would have either enough courage or enough curiosity to ask him what advanced, infernal magic he had harnessed to animate his crown. And he always gave the same answer.

"Outside of the eye, there isn't a drop of magic in my crown," he would say. "It's all tiny gears, pistons, and motors. The motions are programmed and repetitive. The snakes pass through mechanisms that automatically wind them. It has a battery. It has to be oiled."

Many visitors were simply unable to believe that the crown wasn't magic. For their benefit, the king would deign to lift the crown off his head, carefully turn it on its side, and show the coin-shaped batteries on the inside. He would even take one of the golden snakes off of its spoke and hold it in the palm of his hand, showing how it rocked back and forth as it repeated the climbing motions it was programmed to perform despite having nothing to climb around—an automaton knocked off of its base

That was what made his crown seem so _wrong_. Hell's denizens were used to illusions, to spells, to miracles. This was none of the above. Remove its watchful eye and scornful smile—and random eyes were the basest magic in Hell—there was nothing supernatural about it. Uninfluenced by god or demon. It was mechanical, mundane, mortal.

Most visitors wondered why he so freely admitted that there was no magic in the most magical-looking component of his raiment. When his own second-in-command freely wielded witchcraft—when _any_ demon could build up a dangerous amount of magical skill with enough time—why would the king brag about such a weakness?

When a visitor's disappointment and confusion had peaked, the king would say, "Yes, that's right—it's all science and machinery." And then he would smile smugly, and he would add, "The same things I used to overthrow the devil."

And then it made sense. Then the visitors could see exactly why the crown was, after all, a fitting symbol of the king's magnificent power. A crown that was mechanical, mundane, mortal—just like the mortal man who'd conquered Hell. With enough time, any demon could build up decent skill with magic; but nobody else could do what the king had done. Nobody else could build mortal machinery that could topple a fallen angel.

Nobody who spoke with him about his crown walked away feeling like it was a cheap gimmick.

At times, when the damned visited the recently appointed new king of Hell, they could catch sight of his wickedly grinning henchman leaning against the throne's armrest to whisper something to the king, plucking off a couple of the tiny snakes programmed to slither up and down the crown's spines, and gleefully wrapping them around his own antlers.

**Author's Note:**

> Posts for this fic available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/626198318880538624/cobra-kings-clockwork-crown) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/ckret2/status/1293331464097071105?s=20). If you enjoyed the fic, comments/reblogs there are highly appreciated (as are comments here)!


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